


Inescapable Conclusion

by Whreflections



Category: Adam (2009), Charlie Countryman (2013)
Genre: Alpha Adam, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst with a Happy Ending, Consensual Infidelity, F/M, Knotting, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Omega Nigel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 20:08:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6092551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whreflections/pseuds/Whreflections
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the first few years of Adam's relationship with Nigel, Nigel's been dealing with his heats by going elsewhere during them, to a clinic for omegas who aren't on suppressants.  Nigel can't take them because of health and Adam thought he was absolutely okay with that solution, he really did...</p><p>Until he isn't, and the thought of Nigel having another alpha's hands on him becomes as impossible to swallow as the thought of knotting him.  With two impossible solutions, the only answer he sees is to end it, even if it's not the answer either of them wants. </p><p>Fortunately for both of them in this case, Nigel's a hard man to reject.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inescapable Conclusion

**Author's Note:**

> Ugh so I am anxious and have to leave for work, but this is my first spacedogs. I posted this first bit on tumblr the other night but I wanted to come here and post it properly; they'll be a middle and conclusion for this coming. *crawls into a hole*

The lock clicked, and Adam realized he’d forgotten to put the Bertoli bag back in the freezer. A little thing, comparatively, but it was irresponsible and he was rarely irresponsible.  He’d said he’d make dinner and have it ready when Nigel got back with the laundry, and instead all he’d find in the kitchen was a thawed bag of food they couldn’t eat and an empty skillet.  He’d been out all day, working and shopping and getting ready for his trip and-

And Adam’s eyes hadn’t even begun to dry but the reminder had them welling again, spilling over only to be scrubbed at fiercely with the heels of his hands.  The droplets irritated him when they caught on his lashes but his lids were sore and rough from all the rubbing and he _hated_ it, God, he hated every bit of it, the crying and the inability to _stop_ and the pressure in his throat that felt like a living, fluttering thing. 

The sound of Nigel swearing was distant, the thud of laundry basket against hardwood a little closer, the soft rush of footsteps on carpet bringing him in close.  He dropped into a crouch, his hands a little chilled from carrying the groceries when they wrapped around Adam’s wrists.  They were familiar, from the scar on his palm from the glass last he cut it on last year to the calluses worn by the tools of his trade, the tenderness in the curl of his fingers that he reserved for small animals, children, and Adam.  Always Adam. 

It hurt too much to breath, ached in a strange, dizzying way when he didn’t. 

“Adam?”  Even pitched low, stretched with patience, there was a note of desperation there that told him it wasn’t the first time Nigel had called to him.  Maybe not even the fifth.  In lieu of a proper answer, he swallowed.  “What happened while I was gone; are you hurt?  You should have called, darling; I would have fucking—I should have checked on you, I—“  With anyone else, the argument that he wasn’t a child to be checked on would have risen likely fierce enough to make it out of his throat, but this was Nigel, and Nigel never underestimated him, never infantilized him.  He loved, and he worried, and he would have hovered if Adam was the most well-adjusted, stable, and stubborn alpha in the entire world.  He could be all that he isn’t, so long as he still remained at the core all that he _is_ , and Nigel would love him. 

Somehow, it seemed worse to know that if he was better for Nigel, his love wouldn’t wane.  If it would, he might be able to justify keeping him, to form a solid argument that would even out the unstable platform of the limbo they’re in.  If it would, he could, but it wouldn’t, and he can’t—it was as simple as that.  Adam had never been good with hypotheticals. 

Adam swallowed, breathed deep, drew his hands back until Nigel’s fingers fell from his wrists.  The loss ached the way skin does when part of it is torn away beneath adhesive, the lines where Nigel’s skin had rested against his feeling impossibly raw against the air.  “We have to break up.”  Unlike most conversations he rehearsed, this line he’d been unable to say out loud in his practice.  The actual saying of it was every bit as difficult as he’d expected, an odd edge of unreality to it.  His voice hardly sounded like his own, scraped and rough, like a creek full of boulders. 

Nigel, of course, was an element to the conversation he couldn’t have entirely planned for if he’d had ten days to practice, much less one.  Looking up through eyelashes and the fall of his curls he didn’t have a clear view of Nigel’s face, but he didn’t need one.  He could see even obstructed how he flinched, how his mouth dropped open just enough to catch the peek of his tongue, frozen in the act of wetting his lips.  In the context before him, the concept of words hitting like a blow seemed to suddenly make a good deal more sense.  He’d seen Nigel take punches with less reaction, less pain than there was in the little hurt sound that came out before he could find his words. 

“If there’s…something I’ve done, I…”  Nigel’s breath rushed out, wavering.  “ _Adam_.” 

It wasn’t a sentence, or a proper question, but he didn’t need it to be to have an answer.  Already, he’d started shaking his head.  “No, no you didn’t;  you’re exactly right for me and…I say that rather than say you’re perfect because I’ve never liked it used in exaggeration.  You _aren’t_ perfect; you’re dangerous and frustrating and pushy.  You love violence and I hate your friends and the nightclub and the terrible people that come through it that you don’t catch but none of that means that you aren’t in other respects absolutely right for me.  It doesn’t always make sense from a logical standpoint but attraction and pair bonds are formed based on a mosaic of forces and urges and—“  His words were tripping faster, the tails of his words skimming too close to the nose of the next.  He sucked in a breath and hunched closer into the sofa, the draw of his knees against his stomach pulling his breath short.  “—it’s more fascinating that you’re exactly right for me because there is so much about you that’s aversive.  It wouldn’t be impressive if there weren’t.  Perfection could conform universally.  You couldn’t.” 

Nigel’s huff sounded too damp to be laughter, though if there were tears in his eyes Adam couldn’t catch them when he checked.  His glance was too brief, Nigel’s eyes covered behind the fall of his hair, the sweep of his hand and the tilt of his head . “I have to admit, so far I’m not following.  Those aren’t the sort of things you say to a man you’re rejecting.” 

“But I’m _not_.”  The petulance is thick in his voice, overlaid against his own hurt and words that aren’t entirely honest, though they aren’t a lie either.  The confusion hums its dissidence in his veins, a force he rocks a little to sooth, arms tucking in tight around his chest.  “I mean, I am, but I’m not.  I don’t _want_ us to break up but we have to, because I want to bond with you and I can’t, so—“

“Of course you fucking can!” 

Even without the knowledge of Nigel he’d acquired, he doubted he’d have failed to hear the genuine jubilation in that.  Normally, it was a sound that would have Adam laughing along with him, looking him over and committing to memory the thousandth variation on the way the corners of Nigel’s eyes crinkle when he smiles.  Now, it dragged over his ears with all the subtly of a cut, sawing deep. 

Nigel reached out, almost tugged Adam’s knee down before he thought better of it and just pressed closer against the couch, his neck stretched long, shirt pulled down to bare the skin opposite his tattoo.  The faint lines where he’d had his prior bond mark removed were barely visibly, thin and ghost white, his skin clean and ready to accept his prospective mate’s teeth.  “You can do it; you can fucking do it now.  I don’t care how much it hurts, baby; I want it.  I wouldn’t ask but I’ve wanted your mouth on me since the fucking day we met.  D’you see?  She’s gone; it’s—“

“I know.”  Intimately, distinctly.  He could remember with absolute clarity Nigel coming home from his business trip to Spain with his neck clear, smelling of blood and disinfectant when Adam scented him.  He could remember the way that bare skin had snuck into his thoughts as he’d jerked off in the shower days later, his mind catching on the memory of a bonding scene in one of the porn movies Nigel had insisted on dragging out of the closet to put in the DVD cabinets in the living room.  He rarely watched them alone, now, and it had made him burn to hear Nigel whine as the omega’s skin was pierced on the screen, a high needy sound Adam rarely heard.  Under the hot water with his cock in his hand and Nigel’s neck so freshly clean and on his mind, it didn’t take a very vivid imagination to piece together how he might sound if Adam mated him, how his body would shake, the furrows his nails would rake into Adam’s skin. 

Tears had welled in Adam’s eyes again, and he blinked against them, rocked a little harder when they trickled down to sting cold against his lower lids, the corners, the hollows beneath his eyes.  “I know that I could.  I know you’d let me.  I know I could…pull you forward right now and bite down or in the kitchen making dinner or on the sidewalk and you would bare your throat for me.” 

Nigel’s moan was more likely involuntary than an answer, low and short as it was, barely heard.  Adam didn’t need an answer anyway.  He’d already given this a lot of thought. 

“But if I did that, Nigel—“  The taste of his name felt like honey, like acid.  Adam’s breath shuddered, his rocking stilling as his eyes flicked up.  Nigel knelt before him, throat still bared, a desperate look in his eyes that might have been hope.  Adam didn’t want it to be hope.  “I would have to knot you.  You wouldn’t just need to have it at all you’d need _me_.  I’d have to mate with you properly and I—“  The sound that ripped out of his throat was the ugliest sob he’d ever felt, deep and wrenching.  “I don’t want to.  I never have, with anyone; it’d be too much and if I panicked I would hurt you and I won’t hurt you, I _won’t_.”  He wouldn’t be _that_ alpha, never, not even if it cost him, not even with his words coming too fast and his skin too hot and tight.  His sweater felt too heavy, conversely too large and loose.  “I thought I could handle you going away for your heats until you stopped having them because it’s logical and it’s healthy and it’s normal but even if you don’t come home smelling like them I _know_ , I always know and I hate it and I don’t want to feel that anymore, but you have to go, so…I don’t want you to come back.” 

He had the image of Nigel on his knees, fingers still hopefully clenched against his collar to pull it wide, his eyes wet and looking too much like they did the night Adam woke up in the hospital when he’d had the fever that scared Nigel enough that he’d walked him to the emergency room in his arms from the club rather than make him ride in a cab.  Then, he’d traced the line of Adam’s cheek with the back of his knuckles, his touch as feather soft as his voice. 

_Were you going to leave me, darling?  I’d be lost._

Past that one snapshot of clarity, the path he took from the couch to the bedroom blurred.  He properly caught only his own slam of the door, the moment he stumbled circling in their room, the things he gathered, Nigel’s fake Lithuanian passport he’d left out on the dresser being knocked to the floor.  The world only slowed to absolutes again when he was curled on the floor, the warm oak of the door a solid press against his spine, Nigel’s leather jacket spooned up against his chest beneath the blanket he’d snatched off the bed. 

He buried his face in the collar and cried until even the sound of his own breath had gone numb, drowned out by white noise in his ears. 

 


End file.
